Originally self-published in 1964 and long out of print, Ghost Tantras is one of Michael McClure’s signature works, a book mostly written in “beast language.” A mix of lyrical, guttural and laryngeal sound, lion roars, and a touch of detonated dada, this is one of his best-known but least available books, a deep well from which decades of... [more...]

Mysteriosos and Other Poems, Michael McClure’s newest book of poetry, speaks of working toward freedom and beauty during a time of interminable war and the destruction of nature. In the introduction, McClure clarifies his playfulness with time, explaining how within the moment of his writing all moments and memories exist. His “willingness... [more...]

This essential collection of Michael McClure’s poetry contains the most original, radical, and visionary work of a major poet who has been garnering acclaim and generating controversy for more than fifty years. Ranging from A Fist Full, published in 1957, through Swirls in Asphalt, a new poem sequence, Of Indigo and Saffron is both an excellent introduction... [more...]

First published by Talonbooks in 1985, Specks was published in a new edition in 2012, with an new introduction by Paul Nelson.

Michael McClure expands upon Charles Olson’s proprioceptive poetic with Aristotelian metaphysics, Lorca’s duende, environmental awareness, and biological exploration.

Specks assumes the form of a blastula, offering... [more...]

“In McClure’s poems, the shapes are abstractions like DNA (statement of relation and in some poems one-word centered lines on a page) which as a language can’t ever be the same as the object (such as ‘black lily’). Yet he breaks down a distinction between text as object and the phenomenal object of ‘black lilies’... [more...]

“Rain Mirror,” writes Michael McClure, stands as my most bare and forthright book. It contains two long poems, ‘Haiku Edge’ and ‘Crisis Blossom,’ which are quite disparate from one another.” Together, the poems complement each other as so light and dark.

“Haiku Edge” is a poem of linked haiku, ... [more...]

Booklist says,
“Beat poets McClure [and others] caused a great seismic shift in literature with their fresh and liberated approaches to language and focus on the chimerical workings of the mind. Their meditative perspectives led not only to revolutionary poetry but to sustained and beautifully articulated Buddhist practices. In his new collection,... [more...]

HUGE DREAMS brings back two books, long out of print, that are a cornerstone of the Beat movement.

For the first time in one volume, The New Book / A Book of Torture and Star present vividly contrasting sides of poetry’s consciousness. In The New Book / A Book of Torture, a classic example of immediate biological expression, Michael McClure simultaneously... [more...]

Penguin Poets presents “Dolphin Skull,” Michael McClure’s newest long poem of the imagination, published here for the first time with two of McClure’s earlier works. Spontaneously written with long gazes into the unconscious, it is also an exploration of the fullness of memory in the present moment.

In “Rare Angel,”... [more...]

Rebel Lions, Michael McClure’s first book of poetry since the retrospective Selected Poems (1985), spans a decade of profound personal change and poetic evolution for the author. In an introductory note, he provides a backdrop for the collection, which moves from old life to new. McClure’s work bursts forth from the matrix of the physical and... [more...]

The running theme in Michael McClure’s Simple Eyes & Other Poems is: looking at the world directly. The results are often as disquieting a they are illuminating, whether he directs his unblinking gaze on the American cityscape, the landscapes of Mexico and Kenya, or the mind’s own terrain. In the long title poem, “Simple Eyes (Fields),”... [more...]